Thursday, January 11, 2007

Sucky news to wake up to

This was one of the news stories that I found while browsing the NY Times, while half asleep just now. I'm waiting for my morning dose of caffeine to kick in, from my mug of tea, but this was a suitable shock to jerk me fully awake.

I don't know the kids who died or their familes. I'm very sorry for them.

But at the same time, this is the high school that I went to, and I feel bad that something horrible has happened to its students. I know the roads where this accident took place; I've driven them myself, multiple times. Chris takes one of them to work on a regular basis. I think that's what's hit home more than anything; that this took place in my town, the place which has been mine since I was fourteen and entered the Freehold High School for a special gifted learning community that's housed there (commonly referred to as the Boro). I technically live in Freehold Township now, but that doesn't really make a difference.

It's still my school. It's still my town. It's still where I live and make my home. And it's sad that those kids died.

When the same thing happened in my town last year and my friend's daughter was killed, (in that particular case recklessness was involved) the only way I could deal with it was to write a short story where I tried to put myself in the heads of those kids to try to grasp what they were thinking. In the fictionalized version I moved it to New Jersey where I have some other friends. When people read it they were amazed at my "imagination" regarding the scenario, and I had a hard time convincing them that the underlying events were entirely from real life.

It's definitely a tragedy, Ben Parris. And it's strange because I reread the article this evening and noticed things that I hadn't before; for example, the driver of the car was in the medical sciences program at Freehold High School.

*I* went to that program. It's why I went to that high school in the first place. And even though it's evolved in the years since I've graduated, one of the core tenents has remained the same... you are literally in the same classes with the same set of about twenty people , for your entire four years of high school.

My Med Sci class was not always the best of friends; there were rivalries and hatreds and I wasn't even liked very much. We were all incredibly competitive, very intelligent kids, all trying to best each other academically and otherwise. But if one of us had died... my lord, it would have been horrible. Despite our likes and dislikes of each other, each and every one of us would have been devasted, if one of our classmates had died; you may hate the person next to you, but you damn well expect them to be there in class every day and not disappear on you; they're a part of the fabric of your life.

I can only imagine what the current Med Sci class is feeling... sucks, big time.

(For the record, almost eight years after graduating from high school, I still keep in touch with two of my Med Sci classmates, who were my best friends in high school. I occasionally IM two others, and every now and then, news filters down through the grapevine about how someone else is doing. A lot of them are doctors now... it's sort of weird. I went off and became a literary agent instead, despite my love of genetics. Go figure. =)